[REBOL] Re: Who read this mailing list?
From: ale870:gmai:l at: 25-Nov-2007 19:19
Hello Gabriele, I agree with you: this topic is taking the light on a lot of
things.
I think this topic is taking on surface some other things related to Rebol
that let me a little bit baffled:
1) it seems (but it is not clear) that there are only a few people that work
on Rebol (you, Carl, and another couple of guys).
2) All Rebol developers do not work at full time to Rebol development.
3) It seems there are more information about the development plans of RT
here in this topic than in any other place: it means, maybe, the
communication between RT and other people (Rebol fans!) is not well
performed.
4) It seems that there is not any official development plan. I think this
could be a good method (well... not good... but acceptable) for Open Source
/ free apps (developed by the volunteers in their free-time), but this is
not acceptable in a professional development. Yes, in fact, sometimes, we
discuss here as if we are talking about free apps, but we should not forget
we are talking about commercial application. Imagine that, several years
ago, I bought a Command license for my company (they do not allowed me to
buy further licenses since the development was stalled... that was the
impression). Then I bought a personal license (View/Pro) for me.
Again:we should not forget that from RT I do expect a commercial quality
program, commercial quality upgrades, assistance, etc...
Look at other programs like Real Basic, Runtime Revolution, 3D Game Studio
(I use it for 3D, and it has an affordable price for an Indie developer,
Beyond Virtual, etc....), etc... (I do stop here, but I could proceed with
many other programs...). All these development tools, have regular upgrades,
new milestone releases, etc... That's all.
I want to highlight that I like Rebol, but I'm afraid that RT seems to
manage it as a product created by some volunteers, not by a commercial
company.
During these days I was even thinking to offer me to help in Rebol
development. But the problem is this:
1) Since Rebol is not free (and RT gains money from it), I cannot offer me
as free-of-charge.
2) If I could work for free, mybe in the future, if Rebol developement will
be stopped, I will remain with *NOTHING* in my hands, since it is not free.
If I partecipate for free to develop a GPL (LGPL or similar) product, if the
main development group will stop development, I could get the source code of
the product self. In Rebol... no.
Look at similar cases: Commodore Amiga (you know very well), OS/2, BeOS (do
you know? It was really incredible and a revolutions OS, but it failed),
several Smalltalk versions (Dolphin Smalltalk, IBM SmallTalk). More:
Microsoft J++, Borland Kylix (sigh... I like Delphi!), etc....
Don't forget: I talk in this way because I like Rebol, else I was not here
to spend my time to talk about it! :-)
Ciao Gabriele!
On Nov 25, 2007 5:14 PM, Gabriele Santilli <santilli.gabriele-gmail.com>
wrote:
> 2007/11/24, Giuseppe Chillemi <gchillemi-aliceposta.it>:
>
> > The new VID is on only on Carl's mind
>
> That's not really correct. I think it's 90% done (though we're going
> to re-evaluate the design soon, and I may need to rewrite some parts),
> even though the remaining 10% is the one that takes the longest (the
> details)... so it would probably need 3-4 weeks of work (which can
> mean two months real time because I may also be doing other things in
> the meantime, like protocols, testing, R/S on R3, and so on). (Keep in
> mind that 90% required less than 3 weeks, done over about a month - we
> started working on VID in mid July and I had to go back to Qtask in
> mid August.)
>
> > In this situation Rebol3/Core will need at least 3 months to leave the
> > pre-alpha stage and go alpha.
>
> That may be true as there are many things that still need to be done
> (tasks etc), however most of these features are not that critical, so
> you can call it alpha even if tasks are not 100% done and so on. I
> think it already qualifies as "alpha" since you can already write
> useful apps with it (and I did).
>
> > Then will come the time for the other
> > protocols to be implemented and debugged. This mean another 5-7 months.
>
> It can be done in parallel. Carl works on the "kernel" (the actual
> interpreter, the datatypes, etc.), I work on VID and protocols (with
> many others contributing mezz code, eg. thru DevBase), Richard works
> on View and so on.
>
> > Thinking in parallel, VID will be structured and engineered during this
> > time. A first implementation of the new VID will start after core with
> > protocols will go beta.
>
> That's not correct - we're at the second implementation already and
> don't think the third will take much (I think the current code is
> flexible enough for the changes Carl wants to make, so there's not
> much to rewrite. It was asked that we have "css like skinning", and
> although I don't think we need all the complexity of "css like", we
> can do something like that by just using the way VID3 handles style
> options - you can write button "Click" options [rounding: 6] for
> example, so we can just make the options names more "css like" and
> there's not much more code to write).
>
> > Should we think that 1 month is enough for a full GUI system ? No, it
> will
>
> No, about 2 are needed, but it might have been less if I was not
> interrupted. Then of course we still have to refine the edges after
> that, and maybe it will take 6 months or so to call it "release
> candidate", but it's not that hard. It's REBOL we're talking about,
> not Java. :)
>
> > 2010-2011 Seems the time-frame for the firsts maturity and usabilty of
> > Rebol3 in big projects.
>
> It may be true that it will take a few years for it to be as mature as
> R2 is; but, keep in mind R2 was done in like 6 months, and about one
> year later we got View (2000). In 2001 I was already writing
> commercial applications with it - some are still in use today even
> though they run in View 1.2.10 or so. Even though RT may be much
> smaller now, I think you are a bit too pessimistic. OTOH, since many
> things will be left to the community, it's hard to predict when we'll
> have a "critical mass" of modules and plugins available.
>
> Anyway, that was a good post, and I completely agree with the idea -
> there's no need to wait for R3, and even if it's going to take some 3
> years more, the world won't fall in the meantime.
>
> Regards,
> Gabriele.
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>
--
//Alessandro
http://sguish.wordpress.com
http://laccio.wordpress.com
